100 Days to Offload: Day 11

May 5, 2020

Why I sold my Apple Watch

I bought an Apple Watch Series 2 in December 2016 and wore it pretty much constantly until March 2020. Having to charge it every night and just not being a lot of fun to use finally got the better of me. It just never faded into the background, and needed a lot of attention.

I went without a watch for about a month, and then got a Garmin vivosmart 4 activity tracker. It also measures heart rate and number of steps, but also pulse oximetry when you're sleeping. It doesn't have a GPS chip, so your location isn't constantly being monitored. And it costs a lot less. Even less than the price that I got for my Apple Watch after selling it on eBay.

Overall I'm enjoying the experience even more than with my Apple Watch. It has a small OLED screen, so just displays the bare essentials in clear black and white. The battery lasts about a week, but since I wear it when I'm sleeping, charging it for about 10 minutes every day while I'm in the shower seems to be more than enough.

It still displays the time and the current weather conditions, and can send message and app notifications if I so choose. It can even control the music on my phone, so I don't really feel like I'm missing anything I was able to do with the Apple Watch.